Question Two. Whether Original Sin is Lack of Original Justice

9. Second I ask whether this sin is lack of original justice.

10. That it is not:

Because an angel lacks it and yet he does not have any sin.

11. Further, Adam lacked it (for he lost original justice by sinning), and yet he did not have original sin but actual.

12. Further, a baptized child lacks original justice and yet he does not have original sin.

13. If it be said that original sin is in some way remitted to him by grace, so in some way he does not have it - on the contrary: someone baptized who has relapsed does not have grace, and so he does not have a reason for that sin to be remitted to him; and he does not have original justice, so original sin returns in him.

14. Lastly, original sin would be in the will as also is justice, of which that sin is the privation, according to Anselm On the Virginal Conception ch.3; the consequent is false, because the will is the most immaterial power, and consequently separate most of all from the body; therefore it cannot be infected by the flesh, because it is separate from the flesh.

15. It is argued to the opposite that original sin cannot be anything other than this privation:

For it is not concupiscence, first because it is natural ([sc. and not voluntary] from d.29 n.12 above); second because it is in the sensitive part (where sin is not, according to

Anselm [ibid. ch.4]); third because it is non-actual, for the concupiscence then would have been actual, not habitual - the habit, left behind in the soul from mortal sin, is not mortal sin (for such habit remains when sin has been forgiven by penance). Nor even is it ignorance, because a baptized child is as ignorant as an unbaptized one.

16. Further, original sin disorders the whole soul; therefore, if it is some single guilt, it is in the power by whose disorder the whole soul is disordered; that power is the will alone, because just as an ordered will orders the other powers, so a disordered will disorders them. Nor is it anything positive; therefore it is a privation of some justice, a justice opposed to this guilt.